“Cute Companion” or “Awful Thing”: Understanding Individual Differences in Attitudes to Social Robots as Pets

Abstract For users unable to keep pets due to logistical, financial, or health reasons, social robots could offer a substitute. However, these robots remain uncommon in domestic use, and it is unclear how individual user traits or robot attributes impact receptivity or perceptions toward social robots as pets. We conducted a mixed-methods survey exploration ( N = 163) of respondents’ initial receptivity and preconceptions regarding five robots with varied morphologies to understand whether these perceptions correlated with individual traits. We found that indi-vidual differences in anthropomorphism propensity, pet attachment and lower age all predicted positive initial perceptions of the social robots as domestic com-panions, guiding future expectations. Furthermore, a divide emerged between participants with non-negotiable philosophical objections to robot pets and those with addressable concerns around robot fidelity and agency. We discuss the impli-cations of user perceptions on the current feasibility of domestic robot pets and provide actionable directions for robot development.